Gunk in my ginger ale

[Halbrust]

Made up a batch of ginger ale with vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon. Strained I to two liter bottles and carved with champagne yeast. TONS of reddish gunk in my soda.

I've made this recipe before and didn't have 1/10 the sediment as his time. The only differences in the two batches was that I simmered the spices and introduced the sugar to the hot liquid, whereas last time I didn't heat anything. Common sense tells me that simmering the spices causes less settiment. And I added the sugar while the liquid was hot because last time I had some clean white sugar fall out of suspension.

Any ideas why?

 

[MrFoodScientist]

You may not have strained out all the spices, if there are still some fine particles that have somehow gelatinized (probably from simmering), that would probably do it. Try double filtering it on the next batch and see if that helps.

I was working on a pumpkin pie soda syrup this week and got a similar result from simmering the spices, they have a snotty texture after simmering for some reason.